Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Opelika’s most treacherous intersections

After I wrote my five-most dangerous intersections in Auburn blog the other day, I got to thinking: most of those intersections are simply more prone to fender-benders because of high volume rather than high-speed accidents. Oh well. Maybe this should be referred to as “accident prone” rather than “dangerous.” Regardless, here’s my list of the five-most dangerous or accident-prone intersections in Opelika, in no particular order.

* Anything around TigerTown: Lots of roads here. There’s Gateway and Frederick, Gateway and TigerTown, Gateway and Enterprise, etc. TigerTown is a center of commerce, which obviously creates traffic—in many different directions.

* I-85 entrance ramp from U.S. 280/431: Cars/trucks gotta merge with high-speed traffic. Now here’s a recipe for disaster.

* Veterans Parkway or Grand National Parkway and U.S. 280: Good thing there are red lights here now. Still, 280 is a high-speed situation, which lends itself to the potential for bad accidents.

* Gateway Drive (280) and Pepperell Parkway: High traffic volume, often slow, but most dangerous aspect is people rushing to beat red lights.

* South Long Street and Frederick Road: No stop signs on South Long Street, while motorists on Frederick Road often turn onto South Long. The chance for a driver to pull out in front of another is high.

I’m sure there are others, probably a few I didn’t think about.